$5 Trillion Price Tag for Public Pensions~ When is enough enough?

[Ataraxias]

Soleron said:

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Generally Green Sky is right on this. You can look at Japan for other examples; the need to stay employed longer does strangle new graduates. It's not at all about the young people choosing the wrong degree, but because instead that slow economic conditions mean old people feel compelled to stay on, which represses young people, which further stalls the economy because the old people are just spending that income on supplementing too-weak old-age plans instead of on the big consumer goods that young people usually buy. For instance, our generation does not buy homes, or cars. We live in apartments (which, surprise surprise, is causing *those* to become too expensive now too) and do rideshare.

Unless we can retire the old folks, the whole economy is going to collapse as the millennials instead become the "manchild generation," those who never grew up because they were never given a chance to grow up.

I don't believe in this economic value for its own sake thing. We don't "need people to buy cars" to have a good economy, it's like saying that the Hurricane helped the economy because of all the construction jobs now available. Old people have those jobs because they have the skills and experience to do them, and the moment a young person becomes better value they should be exchanged, in a free market (I definitely believe in weaker labour laws).

 

The issue with this is that "entry level" jobs have been destroyed due to salary cuts and hiring freezes and the value that is placed on experience vs skill. It doesn't help that many HR departments are uncoincidently  entrenched with older folk who can't properly assess modern skills.    At my job I produce nearly double the work as my fellow hiree with her 10 years of experience simply because I can google the answers to half the problems that come my way instead referring to the horrid training manuals.   Yet would anyone take "Expert level proficiency with Google" on a resume seriously?